Wang Yuan is caught between the opposing ideas of different generations. After six years abroad, Yuan returns to China in the middle of a peasant uprising. His counsin is a captain in the revolutionary army, his sister has scandalized the family by her premarital pregnancy, and his warlord father continues to cling to his traditional ideals.

Sons: The Good Earth Trilogy, Volume 2

Second in the trilogy that began with The Good Earth, Buck's classic and starkly real tale of sons rising against their honored fathers tells of the bitter struggle to the death between the old and the new in China. Revolutions sweep the vast nation, leaving destruction and death in their wake, yet also promising emancipation to China's oppressed millions, who are groping for a way to survive in a modern age.

The Good Earth

This Pulitzer Prize-winning classic tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers; but they will soon meet their own downfall. The working people riot, breaking into the homes of the rich and forcing them to flee. When Wang Lung shows mercy to one noble and is rewarded, he begins to rise in the world, even as the House of Hwang falls.

Dragon Seed

To the Chinese the dragon is not an evil creature, but is a god and the friend of men who worship him. He "holds in his power prosperity and peace." Ruling the waters and the winds, he sends the good rain, is hence the symbol of fecundity. In the Hsia dynasty two dragons fought a great duel until both disappeared, leaving only a fertile foam from which were born the descendants of the Hsia. Thus, the dragons came to be looked upon as the ancestors of a race of heroes. This is the story of China at War.

Pavilion of Women

On her 40th birthday, Madame Wu carries out a decision she has been planning for a long time: she tells her husband that after 24 years their physical life together is now over and she wishes him to take a second wife. The House of Wu, one of the oldest and most revered in China, is thrown into an uproar by her decision, but Madame Wu will not be dissuaded and arranges for a young country girl to come take her place in bed.

Imperial Woman: The Story of the Last Empress of China

The story of Tzu Hsi is the story of the last empress in China. In this audiobook, Pearl S. Buck recreates the life of one of the most intriguing rules during a time of intense turbulence. Tzu Hsi was born into one of the lowly ranks of the Imperial dynasty. According to custom, she moved to the Forbidden City at the age of 17 to become one of hundreds of concubines. But her singular beauty and powers of manipulation quickly moved her into the position of Second Consort.

Peony: A Novel of China

Young Peony is sold into a rich Chinese household as a bondmaid - an awkward role in which she is more a servant, but less a daughter. As she grows into a lovely, provocative young woman, Peony falls in love with the family's only son. However, tradition forbids them to wed. How she resolves her love for him and her devotion to her adoptive family unfolds in this profound tale, based on true events in China over a century ago.

Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth

The author of the much honored two-volume biography of Henri Matisse unearths the life and work of the Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winner Pearl Buck, whose novels in the 1930's and 40's were the first written for a Western audience to describe ordinary life in the still secret China of the late 19th and early 20th century.

The Good Earth

Set in pre-Revolutionary China, The Good Earth is the poignant story of Wang Lung, a rice farmer whose industry and commitment to the land enable him and his family to prosper. But unexpected drought forces the family south in search of food, and there they suffer the spiritual impoverishment of life in the city. Wang Lung’s courageous journey back to his farm is a spiritual affirmation of the values of the land.

Pearl of China

An internationally best-selling author, Anchee Min draws upon her Chinese heritage to pen lush historical epics. Here she transports listeners to the Far East for a fictionalized account of acclaimed author Pearl Buck’s youth. Arriving in late 19th-century China with her missionary parents, Buck is soon fascinated by her new home and strikes up a friendship with a young Chinese girl named Willow. The two become inseparable, even as civil war, failed relationships, and world conflicts threaten all they hold dear.

The Red Chamber

When orphaned Daiyu leaves her home in the provinces to take shelter with her cousins in the Capital, she is drawn into a world of opulent splendor, presided over by the ruthless, scheming Xifeng and the prim, repressed Baochai. As she learns the secrets behind their glittering facades, she finds herself entangled in a web of intrigue and hidden passions, reaching from the petty gossip of the servants' quarters all the way to the Imperial Palace.

Empress Orchid

Seventeen-year-old Orchid belongs to an aristocratic family that has fallen on hard times. Unexpectedly, she is chosen as one of the emperor's lesser concubines. Within the Forbidden City are thousands of women hoping to bear the emperor a son and become his empress. Orchid, determined and resourceful, schemes her way into the royal bed and seduces the emperor. But as the opium trade erodes the might of the Ch'ing dynasty, Orchid find herself at the center of a crumbling nation.

Thousand Pieces of Gold

Lalu Nathoy's father called his thirteen-year-old daughter his treasure, his "thousand pieces of gold," yet when famine strikes northern China in 1871, he is forced to sell her. Polly, as Lalu is later called, is sold to a brothel, sold again to a slave merchant bound for America, auctioned to a saloonkeeper, and offered as a prize in a poker game. This biographical novel is the extraordinary story of one woman's fight for independence and dignity in the American West.

Mao: The Unknown Story

Based on a decade of research and on interviews with many of Mao's close circle in China who have never talked before, and with virtually everyone outside China who had significant dealings with him, this is the most authoritative biography of Mao ever written.

Nanjing Requiem

Author Ha Jin’s celebrated works have claimed several top literary awards, including three Pushcart Prizes. In Nanjing Requiem, the Japanese are poised to invade Nanjing. The dean of Jinling Women’s College, Minnie Vautrin mistakenly believes her American citizenship will protect the school. But Vautrin’s life becomes a daily struggle as the school becomes a refugee camp - and the slaughter of refugees begins.

Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World

Margaret MacMillan brings her extraordinary gifts to two of the most important countries today, the United States and China, and one of the most significant moments in modern history: Richard Nixon's week in China in February 1972, which opened relations between America and China (closed since the communists came to power in 1949).

The Commoner: A Novel

Meticulously researched, and superbly imagined, The Commoner is the mesmerizing, moving, and surprising story of a brutally rarefied and controlled existence, at once hidden and exposed, and of a complex relationship between two isolated women who, despite being visible to all, are truly understood only by each other.

Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze

This deeply researched book describes one of the great forgotten battles of the 20th century. At its height it involved nearly a million Chinese and Japanese soldiers, while sucking in three million civilians as unwilling spectators and, often, victims. It turned what had been a Japanese adventure in China into a general war between the two oldest and proudest civilizations of the Far East. Ultimately, it led to Pearl Harbor and to seven decades of tumultuous history in Asia. The Battle of Shanghai was a pivotal event that helped define and shape the modern world.

The Cooked Seed: A Memoir

In 1994, Anchee Min made her literary debut with a memoir of growing up in China during the violent trauma of the Cultural Revolution. Red Azalea became an international bestseller and propelled her career as a successful, critically acclaimed author. Twenty years later, Min returns to the story of her own life to give us the next chapter, an immigrant story that takes her from the shocking deprivations of her homeland to the sudden bounty of the promised land of America, without language, money, or a clear path. It is a hard and lonely road.

The Interior: A Red Princess Mystery

While David Stark is asked to open a law office in Beijing, his lover, detective Liu Hulan, receives an urgent message from an old friend imploring her to investigate the suspicious death of her daughter, who worked for a toy company about to be sold to David’s new client, Tartan Enterprises.

On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family

Out of the stories heard in her childhood in Los Angeles's Chinatown and years of research, See has constructed this sweeping chronicle of her Chinese-American family, a work that takes in stories of racism and romance, entrepreneurial genius and domestic heartache, secret marriages and sibling rivalries, in a powerful history of two cultures meeting in a new world.

Heaven Cracks, Earth Shakes: The Tangshan Earthquake and the Death of Mao's China

When an earthquake of historic magnitude leveled the industrial city of Tangshan in the summer of 1976, killing more than a half-million people, China was already gripped by widespread social unrest. As Mao lay on his deathbed, the public mourned the death of popular premier Zhou Enlai. Anger toward the powerful Communist Party officials in the Gang of Four, which had tried to suppress grieving for Zhou, was already potent; when the government failed to respond swiftly to the Tangshan disaster, popular resistance to the Cultural Revolution reached a boiling point.

Daughters of the Dragon: A Comfort Woman's Story

During World War II, the Japanese forced 200,000 young Korean women to be sex slaves or "comfort women" for their soldiers. This is one woman’s riveting story of strength, courage, and promises kept. In 1943, the Japanese tear young Ja-hee and her sister from their peaceful family farm to be comfort women for the Imperial Army. Before they leave home, their mother gives them a magnificent antique comb with an ivory inlay of a two-headed dragon, saying it will protect them.

Telex from Cuba: A Novel

Rachel Kushner's mother grew up in Cuba in the 1950s, in the United Fruit Company enclave where Telex from Cuba takes place. Calling on a rich trove of family letters, photos, meticulously kept journals, and historical research, Kushner sets free her brilliant imagination in this profoundly resonant story of a world that was paradise for a time and for a few.

Publisher's Summary

A House Divided, the third volume of the trilogy that began with The Good Earth and Sons, is a powerful portrayal of China in the midst of revolution. Wang Yuan is caught between the opposing ideas of different generations.

After six years abroad, Yuan returns to China in the middle of a peasant uprising. His cousin is a captain in the revolutionary army, his sister has scandalized the family by her premarital pregnancy, and his warlord father continues to cling to his traditional ideals. It is through Yuan's efforts that a kind of peace is restored to the family.

One must examine A House Divided as the third part of the Good Earth Trilogy. The Good Earth, Sons, and this novel. First the good, then the bad (but no ugly to mention). The novels certainly have insight into humankind’s frailties; that we go through life not actually knowing what it is we are doing. These books are an in depth analysis of our everyday humankind undertakings – they show our innate biases, how we consider others and are we really perceiving the world realistically or with inborn predispositions. The books though lay these concepts out in a litany or list of very beautiful prose, but without much plot. Its teachings are repeated, and repeated and repeated so much that the read really became a bore. The first book, The Good Earth was enough. The next two were not an enjoyable read,.The Good Earth, is about a Chinese peasant, his love of the land and his rise to a princely state. Good. The second, Sons, is about his sons, and in particular one that becomes a (pseudo) warrior. A total bore to read and without any involving story. Just frustration after frustration following the stories lead character or brother. The last and our novel, A House Divided, follows the warrior’s son’s feckless search in life for who he should be. He is a wet noodle.

So there you have it, good teaching, poor plots, and just not enough there to read all three books. If you must then The Good Earth. The last, our book A House Divided, is bearable but to get any worth out of it you need to read Sons, and I just did not find the total read worth the effort. Yes, I know I gave Sons a fairly good accreditation. Looking back now, I can’t understand why?

Two last points. The books’ titles are more invigorating than the books’ stories. Yes, I know, how dare I not praise literature that won the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes? Well 80 years ago China was an unknown and these tombs made known to the western world the nature and character of the Chinese peoples. Achievement one. As I have said they do very thoroughly examine human frailties. Achievement two. They are (were) valuable teaching tools written in a unique writing style. Achievement three. Worthy as study materials in the 1930s (and even today). Yes. As invigorating reads? No.

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